In a groundbreaking study, researchers have successfully developed a method that could lead to unprecedented advances in computer speed and efficiency of computers by genetic engineering.
Through this study, researchers Desmond Loke, Griffin Clausen, Jacqueline Ohmura, Tow-Chong Chong, and Angela Belcher have successfully developed a method to "genetically" engineer a better type of memory using a virus called M13 bacteriophage.
One of the best strategies for achieving faster computers is to mitigate the millisecond-order time delays arising from the transfer and storage of information between silicon- and magnetic-based memories. Segregating-binary-alloy (SBA)-type phase-change materials (PCMs), such as gallium antimonide-based systems, can store information on 10 ns time scales by using a single memory structure; however, these materials are hindered by the high consumption of energies and undergo elemental segregation around 620 K.
When your computer stores data, it has to pause while the information moves from one piece of hardware to another hardware. But that may soon stop being the case, as scientists from MIT and the Singapore University of Technology and Design uncovered a new manufacturing trick that should let them build computers that don't have those annoying delays. This researcher used virus to develop such faster computers. The key is to sit back and let a virus the biological kind handle the assembly work.
The template structure, M13 bacteriophage (“phage”), is approximately 6.5 nm in diameter and 880 nm in length and has been previously demonstrated to be an excellent biological template for achieving ultrasmall, functional wires to form self-assembly building blocks for state-of-the-art electronic devices.
Using a virus called a M13 bacteriophage to manufacture a specific component may unlock phase-change memory systems, a type of digital storage that would speed up any computer using it, according to research published last month in the journal ACS Applied Nano Materials.
Long Term Memory
The problem these viruses solve comes from the way memory is transferred within a computer. Moving data from high-speed but transient RAM to permanent storage on a hard drive can sometimes take a computer several milliseconds.
Replacing that two-part memory system with a single, catch-all type of storage called phase-change memory would reduce that delay to about ten nanoseconds.
Bug In The System
But the existing manufacturing process for phase-change memory reaches temperatures high enough to destroy gallium antimonide, one of the base materials necessary for phase-change memory systems.
Using a virus to pull the pieces of gallium antimonide together into usable wires, however, kept the temperature much lower, according to the research.
So fret not. At some point in the future, should this research find its way into computer hardware systems, your lost milliseconds will be returned to you and you'll be far more productive — if you can stay off Twitter. This approach addresses some of the critical material compositional and structural constraints that currently diminish the utility of PCMs in universal memory systems.
This article was originally published by Futurism. Read article